To attain video recording or reproduction with high image quality by properly deciding the compression rate of an information signal or an overwritten position on a recording medium depending on the importance of program contents so as to utilize effectively the recording area of a recording medium such as DVD thereby utilizing its recording capacity to the maximum.

A video disk recorder 100 compresses a video signal included in a television signal at a prescribed compression rate, records the compressed signal onto an optical disk 1 and reproduces it from the disk 1. The television signal received by a signal input section 2 in this video disk recorder 100 is compressed by a variable rate encoder 4 and sent to a recording and reproducing section 3. The signal received by the recording and reproducing section 3 is recorded thereat on the optical disk 1. The video recorder 100 especially has a probability arithmetic section (information evaluation section) 5 that conducts weighting in response to the importance of contents of the television signal and a control section 6 that revises a compression rate according to this weighting.